


Here At The End Of All Things

by nwspaprtaxis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Batcave, Between Seasons/Series, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Men of Letters Bunker, Pain, Post-Episode: s08e23 Sacrifice, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Sharing Feelings, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 02:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwspaprtaxis/pseuds/nwspaprtaxis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows he’s sticking his fingers into a raw, gaping wound, digging around for the bullet when all Dean wants to do is to curl up wounded-animal in the corner and let it heal over into an ugly mess of keloid scars that won’t hurt nearly as much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here At The End Of All Things

**Author's Note:**

> **_A/N:_** After watching the breathtaking Season Eight finale, _8x23 SACRIFICE_ , I was compelled to write a coda of sorts to it, addressing a certain speech Sam made to Dean because there’s no way that didn’t eat away at Dean and it was screaming for some adult dialogue between them where they actually discuss what was said. But since Show is still babystepping its way towards that and will never give us that kind of openness, I decided to damn the torpedoes and write my own take.
> 
> A million thanks to **tifaching** for a rock hard beta and taking something that was raw and unedited and rusty from an ongoing writer’s block and making it at least somewhat shiny and polished.
> 
>  ** _Disclaimer:_** Do not own. Am not making a profit. I'm just simply having fun with their psyches and returning them slightly more battered to Kripke and Co. and all that Yada Yada.

Sam wakes slowly, his body aching as though he’d gone ten rounds with an in-his-prime Muhammad Ali. Or maybe a Wendigo. Yeah. He’s going with Wendigo. Their lives are so weird.

The surface he’s lying on is impossibly comfortable, cocooning and cushioning his body in all the right places.

He’s hot, though, and he fumbles to push away the source of heat when his hand comes in contact with something solid.

His eyes snap open and he sees Dean lying beside him, awake and staring at the ceiling. Beyond him is a wall of weapons. _Dean’s room_.

His brother looks exhausted, wrecked. As though he’d been gutted and hung out to dry. “How’re you feeling?” Dean asks monotonously.

Sam edges backwards a half an inch to give them more space and to try to read his brother’s shadowed face.

“Better,” Sam tells him. “A lot better.” And it’s the truth. He does feel better — tired and wrung-out and shaky, sure, but it’s an improvement. The raw feeling in his lungs and throat hasn’t gone away and his entire body aches, but at least his heart isn’t trying to pound its way out of his chest and his brain isn’t exploding or leaking out of his ears from all the resonating and nothing smells of rotting meat. He’ll take it. “What about you? You look like roadkill, dude.”

Dean tips his shoulder upwards, doesn’t say anything.

“Dean?” Sam’s careful to keep his voice soft, measured. He knows they have to talk about last night — about his weepy breakdown where he regressed to, like, three and bawled all over his big brother while heaven cracked wide open and all the angels fell in one massive, celestial meteor shower. “You okay?”

“I’ll live,” Dean grunts, his voice raw like he’d been crying himself.

Sam takes a breath. _This_. This is where he needs to tread carefully. He can tell Dean is a time bomb ticking down to detonation and his big brother is barely holding it together. “You will,” he confirms. “But you’re not okay. From where I’m sitting, you’re pretty far from,” he takes another breath. “So ’m I, actually. About last night...” he trails off when his brother’s breathing quickens.

“Don’t wanna talk about it,” Dean almost growls and the words are too fast, running together, and Sam knows his brother is already heading into shutdown territory.

“We have to,” Sam presses. He knows he’s sticking his fingers into a raw, gaping wound, digging around for the bullet when all Dean wants to do is to curl up wounded-animal in the corner and let it heal over into an ugly mess of keloid scars that won’t hurt nearly as much. “We can’t pretend it didn’t happen — I didn’t complete the trials, that thing we saw with the angels...” He doesn’t dare bring up Cas — he wouldn’t put it past Dean to drive an elbow into his nose and he values his face too much for that. And, well, maybe he isn’t ready to talk about the angel either.

Dean doesn’t answer and keeps staring up at the ceiling as though he can divine the solutions to the universe in plastered-over concrete.

“Dean?”

“What d’you want me to say, Sam?” Dean sounds weary, as though it takes way more effort than he has energy for to drag the words up from deep inside him. “I don’t regret it. I can’t. Won’t. You can hate my guts all you want, but I don’t care — closing Hell is not worth losing you.” He exhales and Sam waits. His brother seems years older. Dean pauses, then, “I can’t do it again. And don’t you fucking dare tell me I can, because I don’t want to. It was bad enough the first time... And in case if you’re wondering, don’t. I’d swap in my soul all over again, no questions, even knowing what comes after, all of it. I’d do it again. Then...” he takes another breath. “Then there was that year with Lisa. The woman’s a saint. I still have no idea how or why she put up with me — I drank like a fish, had seriously fucked up nightmares, could barely function… and those were the good days. I tried, you know, to get you back. They wouldn’t take a trade-in. Damaged goods and all that. Why take the spare when you have the guy who was intended to be Lucifer’s meatsuit all along?” He pauses, swallows another breath, his throat working, and continues, “I’m not going to survive a third time, Sam. I can’t. You promised you’d make it out alive and if nothing else, I need you to keep that.” He blows out his breath. “The rest can fuck itself.”

He rotates his head until he’s facing Sam. His eyes are wet looking — _If you can’t, I’m going with_. He exhales shakily and a solitary tear runs out of the corner of his right eye, slips past his temple, sinking instantly into the pillowcase.

“Okay,” Sam whispers. “Okay. I can do that.”

“Good.” Dean studies Sam for another moment then turns back to the ceiling. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, low and hoarse. And Sam knows they’ve gotten to the elephant between them, the reason Dean looks like he hasn’t slept all night. He keeps silent, his breathing even, giving Dean the time to find his words and drag them out of his throat. “I’m sorry for ever letting you think you failed me. Sure there’s been times when you’ve made me madder than fuck. I’m not denying that.” He pauses; _you’ve hurt me too_ left unsaid. “You’re my kid brother. It comes with the fucking territory. You’re supposed to do that. But… y’know… I’ve always forgiven you and there is no one I’d rather have at my back. Not Dad. Not Cas. Not Benny. _You_. And the fact you don’t get it… Well, that’s on me.”

The minutes stretch on forever and there’s no other sound except for their synchronized breathing. And Sam gets the sense that Dean’s spread all his cards on the table and he’s waiting for Sam to play his hand.

“Thanks,” he finally says, feeling woefully unprepared and caught out, having slept instead of thinking of something to say. He knows his words aren’t enough, but they’re all he’s got. “Just… thanks.”

“That’s it? I bare my soul to you and all you can say is _thanks_?” Dean swivels his head towards Sam. He blinks hard and looks away.

“Well, you caught me a bit off guard with the prepared poem and everything…” Sam tries for a grin and he can feel it fall off his face before it even has time to stick and he sees another rogue tear rush from Dean’s eye into his ear. Suddenly he feels like he’s five and just wants to stop his big brother from crying.

He wonders if they had it right way back then — big brother and little brother against the world — and he wonders when they lost track of that. Or maybe it was only him who got turned around and found Dean right back where they started.

He takes a slow breath and exhales. He doesn’t dare touch his brother, not when Dean is coiled up with so much emotion and pain that he’s as likely to punch him and come apart as he is to run. Instead he remains quiet for a beat. Then, “it goes both ways, you know… Everything you said… It goes for me too.” He sighs. “And I don’t want it any other way either.” He takes another breath. “It’s gonna be okay, Dean. We’ll figure it out.” He pushes himself upright, his long legs connecting with his brother’s and he doesn’t miss the instantaneous grimace and soft grunt of pain. “What’s wrong?”

“Knee,” Dean grits out and his face tightens again but Sam’s already pulling back the bedcovers.

“Jesus,” Sam curses quietly. His brother’s left knee is the size of a small melon. “What the hell happened to you…?”

“It’s not your fault,” Dean says. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not your fault.”

Sam looks up. Remembers Dean half carrying him out of the church, then, much later and more vaguely, manhandling him out of the car, down the long, sloping walkway, and into the bunker. There’s a surge of something akin to guilt when he realizes he must’ve passed out at some point and Dean’d, presumably, taken him in here, stripped him to boxers and t-shirt and tucked him in.

“Hey,” Dean’s voice cuts into his thoughts. “Snap out of it. Did you hear what I just said? It’s not your fault so don’t go blaming yourself.”

Sam meets his brother’s scowl as it softens and nods. “You need anything?” he asks quietly. This is the least he can do; his fault or not, he is still the reason Dean fucked up his knee.

“Yeah,” Dean grunts. “Get me up man.” He’s already half upright by the time Sam wraps his hand around his brother’s bicep.

“You sure…?”

“Gotta piss,” Dean cuts him off. “’Sides, it’s only like a five or six…” he stands, groaning softly as he puts weight on his joint, simultaneously jerking his arm out of Sam’s hold. He takes a tentative, limping step forward. And Sam’s got his hand around Dean’s arm just as his brother’s leg threatens to buckle and keeps Dean from going down.

“Humor me,” Sam says, securing his grip, and it’s a sign of how crap his brother must feel when Dean acquiesces without a murmur, leaning up a little into him. _Or maybe_ , Sam thinks as they make their slow way sown the hall, Dean limp-hopping beside him, _it’s just his way of trying to make amends_.

Dean refuses him access to the bathroom and Sam hovers outside the bathroom until Dean appears, grimacing and a little pale in the doorway. Dean sways as he takes the weight off his knee by hanging onto Sam’s shoulder and accepting his brother’s steadying hold on his hip. Neither of them let go as they wind their way deeper into the bunker. They hesitate in the main atrium for a moment by the map table before Dean grits out “couch,” and they proceed into the living room.

Dean settles on the black leather sofa and props his foot on the mahogany coffee table, elevating his knee. He doesn’t make a move to turn on the seventy-inch television screen he’d lugged in and mounted to the wall at some point between the second and third trials.

“I’ll be right back,” Sam tells him. “I’m just going to get you some ice.”

In the kitchen Sam fires up their new Keurig, loads a plate of butter-and-jelly slathered toast and grabs a package of frozen peas. On his way out the door, he snags an unopened bubble envelope Charlie had sent him a while back that Dean’d picked up from their P. O. Box twenty miles away the last time he’d run into town and Sam hadn’t had a chance to open yet between all the shit with the trials.

Sam sets the tray on the table, places the bag of frozen peas on his brother’s knee, and hands Dean his mug of coffee, dark and thick as pitch the way his brother likes it, along with four Advils. Dean downs the pills with a swig and lets out a sound normally reserved for handjobs in the shower. “Fuck, Sam, let’s not ever leave here, okay? Between that gizmo and the awesome freezer we got everything.”

Sam grins, settling in besides his brother. He reaches out and tears into the package.

“What’s that?” Dean perks up in interest, his affair with his coffee momentarily forgotten.

“Dunno. Charlie sent it.” The package finally submits and three DVDs fall into his lap along with an index card that has _HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAM!_ scrawled in black Sharpie: _Star Trek_ , _The Avengers_ , and…

“Isn’t that the new Indiana Jones movie?” Dean snatches it off Sam’s lap and immediately flips it over, perusing the blurb.

“We can watch it if you want,” Sam says softly. He thinks he remembers a comment from ages ago when Dean came back from Hell and that maybe they should’ve picked it up a long time ago.

“You…”

“Yeah,” Sam smiles again. “We haven’t done something like this in a while. Gimme it. I’ll put it in…” He takes the case from his brother and opens it, ejecting _Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull_ with his thumb and index finger. He gets up and slips the jeweled disc into the player and presses buttons on the remote, making the television explode to life, as he plops on the couch beside Dean, deliberately taking as much space as possible. He slides in a little closer so that their shoulders touch and jabs repeatedly, futilely, at the menu button until the FBI anti-piracy warning fades to black — he’s surprised that Charlie got him the legal version and not some black-market copy — and the previews skip to the main menu.

He presses play and discards the remote, leaning forward in his seat to seize his mug — his own coffee pale and sweetened with cream and sugar — and a slice of toast before settling back next to his brother.

He can’t remember the last time they did this — told the world to fuck itself and solve its own problems for a couple of hours while the Winchester Brothers sat in boxers and t-shirts and watched horrible sequels and visually-awesome JJ Abrams flicks. He makes a mental note to thank Charlie later.

Halfway through, when the toast is demolished, the coffee has evaporated into rings in the crevices of their mugs, and the peas are a soggy, defrosted pack on the floor, Sam feels a weight press on his shoulder. He turns his head slightly and sees that Dean’s fallen asleep.

He shifts slightly and Dean stirs, settling more comfortably.

“Al’ns, S’mmy,” he mumbles sleepily with an absolute absence of panic. “We n’vr h’nt’d thos’.” His voice sounds a little forlorn as he slips under again.

Their lives are so weird.

Sam smiles as he turns back to the movie.

Yeah, they can do this.


End file.
